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Thoughts on fees, blockspace utilization, BRC20s and What's Going On
1288 sats \ 10 comments \ @028559d218 6 Apr bitcoin
Just to do a fee and blockspace-utilization comparison...
This is from December of 2023:
The fees were high (over 200 sat/vb) and the blocks were completely full. Granted... they were full of "ordinals" JPEGs and BRC-20 "tokens"...
But they were completely full nevertheless and the fee market was absolutely booming. I remember sitting and having lunch, just watching the mempool and Bitcoin was expensive to use but blockspace was 'in demand.'
Some example 'BRC-20' tokens (basically lines of JSON added to a transaction...) from that era:
'Ordi' (the BRC token)
'Sats' (the BRC token)
'Trac' (also BRC)
'Pups' (the BRC token this was also a JPEG too???)
'Mice' (a BRC)
'NodeMoneks' (this was a popular 'NFT' at that time)
'Quantum Cats' (a scammer-NFT)
'Bitcoin Frogs' (NFT)
There were many others but these are the ones I remember or were in the 'top ten' and taking up 'blockspace.'
This is from a year ago (it's the last halving block 840000)
If you were watching the mempool live during the halving it was crazy. Think Mempool-Superbowl.
Fees were over 200 sats/vb... blocks were PACKED and millions upon millions of Dollars were consumed in fees the vast majority of which just to "mint" Runes tokens.
My understanding is that 99% of the blocks the week of the halving were consumed with 'Runes' transactions... and over 37 Bitcoin just in fees alone were spent during block 840000.
One block -> 37 BTC in fees.
Here is the highest-paying Runes 'transaction' of the halving block:
...It cost over 673 Million Sats (~400k $) for one transaction. It wasn't a 'fat finger' or a mistake either... but likely deliberate considering... how the hell do you make a Rune anyway???
This is the corresponding 'FEHU' token minted in that transaction:
And here are some other 'popular' Runes of that same time period:
'Uncommon Goods'
'Dog go to the Moon'
'Pups'
'Satoshi Nakamoto'
'RuneCoin'
You get the idea.
This is the mempool today.
We can barely fill blocks, hashrate is astronomical
And median fee-rates are at historic lows (although BTC is ~ 83k vs ~ 64k at the time of the halving)
So what, exactly is going on here? What conclusions can we draw from this information? What do we 'know' or not know?
I don't have an answer for that.
But what I gather is that education about Bitcoin is really really hard. There are lots of scammers and grifters, not necessarily "Nigerian-prices" but more of the "Quantum-Cats" variety...
And the desire for people to gamble and degen is very strong.
Monetary-education and usage of Bitcoin "the money" or even Bitcoin "the capital" is very, very difficult to instill in people who aren't innately interested or don't have the 'personal drive' for it.
Despite Nostr, Stacker News, and new apps being built every day utilizing sovereign money and sovereign internet, secure and derived from energy...
Where is everyone?
Think of all the transactions simultaneously in Germany (Europe's largest economy) plus the United States (the world's largest) plus Japan, Australia, Canada, China etc etc...
Blocks should be absolutely brimming with transactions but they aren't. Why?
They were 'brimming' with NFTs and Memecoins totaling millions in fees (see the charts above) and those things are largely gone now, along with the demand for blockspace. What's going on?
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11 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 6 Apr
Blocks should be absolutely brimming with transactions but they aren't. Why?
As I said many times: onchain should be used exclusively to open/close LN channels and swaps to refill them.
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5 sats \ 3 replies \ @028559d218 OP 6 Apr
If a block is ~ 4000 transactions... and only half of them are Lightning-Channel-Openings that means around 2000 Channel-openings per block.
2000 x 6 or 12,000 openings per hour. or 288,000 opened channel a day right?
Or ~ 2,016,000 Channel Openings a week. Assuming most of those channels get opened and stay open, and On-Chain's Primary use-case is 'opening channels'...
Then like 100 Million channels can be opened a year at ~ 2000 channels per block. Let's say it's less than that and 'half' of that... so like 50 Million Channel-Opens a year.
That's 50 Million individuals with at least one lightning-channel opening which is more than enough to create a circular economy or Lightning-usage of significant scale. Add to that JiT Channels, Fedimints for small amounts etc etc... There should be tons of people using Lightning and there's tons of capacity.
Where is everyone?
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20 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 6 Apr
Where is everyone?
People are retarded and using tether and stablecraps... Also take in consideration PRIVATE LN nodes, that you do not see in public graph.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @028559d218 OP 6 Apr
I remember... I've read your guides (although I don't understand everything honestly)
My point is, tether and stablecraps aren't derived from energy. They're just paper.
And the 'tokens' and NFTs people burned serious Bitcoin on are worthless.
Fees are like 1 sat/vB blocks should be full of Lightning channel openings
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 6 Apr
Fees are like 1 sat/vB blocks should be full of Lightning channel openings
Indeed. Take in consideration here:
  • many channels now are using taproot openings, so hard to "see" them
  • people already have open enough channels, from a long period of low fees.
  • not so many new users are using LN nodes. Mostly are still using crap custodials and newly ecash. So that is only moving custodial credits between custodials, not real sats.
LN is far from large adoption, because again... people are retarded.
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 6 Apr
This time it really is different. I'll take a few guesses as to why it's so quiet on the base layer:
  • Retail is nowhere to be seen. Maybe think it's too late now that corporations and nation states are here.
  • Self custodial education is not getting through the macro/Trump noise.
  • LN is working and more bitcoiners are using it.
  • It's just the calm before the storm.
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37 sats \ 0 replies \ @028559d218 OP 6 Apr
Retail is nowhere to be seen. Maybe think it's too late now that corporations and nation states are here.
In my opinion Bitcoin is just starting... because we don't have "Youtube Lightning" yet I don't know what retail is thinking. It wasn't that long ago Germany sold all their Bitcoin
Self custodial education is not getting through the macro/Trump noise.
This is a shame.
LN is working and more bitcoiners are using it.
Indeed, and once a few Lightning channels are set up you're pretty much done. Without more education the fees will stay low.
It's just the calm before the storm.
We'll see.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @StackerJack 6 Apr
What's really interesting here is how quickly this BRC-20 hype showed the cracks in Bitcoin’s base layer. The experiment highlighted just how much demand for blockspace can shift when the speculative phase ends.
It's almost like we got a glimpse of the future where Bitcoin’s true utility might not lie in just transactions or tokens, but in entirely new forms of value and layer 2 solutions.
Short-term buzz, fine... long term, more about understanding how to make this network scalable and sustainable long-term. Might actually be exactly what pushes Bitcoin beyond the surface-level use cases, and set the stage for something bigger.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @028559d218 OP 6 Apr
See my post to Darth above... 2000 x 6 x 24 x 7 x 52... or like 100 million Lightning channel openings a year. Even at 50% of that it's ~ 50 million channels opened in a year.
My take away is that there's a lot of unused capacity for Lightning and transactions on Bitcoin, like a tremendous amount of capacity available to open channels to 'transact' for regular-sized transactions or micro-transactions.
And now that BRCs and Jpegs have fizzled out we see the real demand for monetary transactions: around 1 sat/vB.
The good news is there is so much more room for monetary scaling... from what I can see. The not as goodnews... is that this shows how little real demand there is worldwide for Bitcoin Layer 1.
Moving funds and paying people basically is 1-2 sats/vB that's it currently.
And once Bitcoin users have a few 'lightning channels' opened... there's really no reason to 'go onchain' except very rarely.
So without new users and more 'education' as to why to transact in Bitcoin, there's almost no demand for L1 after the NFTs have fizzled out.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @028559d218 OP 6 Apr
As a follow-up article to this post...
https://cryptoslate.com/bybit-shuts-doors-on-nft-marketplace-as-interest-wanes/
NFT trading volume collapse The shutdown follows a broader trend of waning institutional interest in NFTs. Kraken recently shut down its own NFT marketplace, while LG Electronics has discontinued its NFT platform, LG Art Lab, after three years of activity. Data from blockchain analytics firm DappRadar shows that trading volumes for top NFT collections have plummeted more than 95% since the market’s peak in 2021. The number of active wallets engaging in NFT trades has fallen from over half a million to less than 20,000 as of 2025. Total NFT sales fell to $1.5 billion during the first quarter, down from $4.1 billion in the same period last year — a 63% year-over-year drop. Sales in March alone were down 76% compared to the prior year.
If NFTs are 'dead' like, for real... Like as in Kraken and Bybit closing thier 'nft divisions' completely. Then the on-chain demand for Bitcoin right now is a truer gauge of the monetary and transactional demand. So basically 1 sat/vB
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